A grape difference: Special harvester, rather than crew of 600, picks the fruit this year at Lee winery

LEE — Looking into the vineyard of Flag Hill Winery Monday morning, an unusual machine crept up and down the rows of grapevines.

For the first time in the winery's 18-year history, the grapes from the 18 acres of vineyards were harvested by machine rather than by the traditional handpicking that takes place annually by the community.

The lightly used French tow-behind, a Gregoire over the row harvesting machine, was purchased by Flag Hill from a New York vineyard. The new piece of equipment also required a $50,000 to $60,000 specialized tractor and moves slowly —anywhere from one to four mph — up and down the rows of grapes, shaking the vines gently and piling thousands of grapes into the buckets on either side of the machine where up to three acres of fruit can be held.

Heather Houle, director of marketing for Flag Hill, said the machine provides a lot more flexibility with harvesting than the old method. While she said it was amazing to have such a turnout of about 600 people from the surrounding communities help with harvesting the grapes each year, this machine lets them decide day-to-day throughout the season when to pick the grapes based on the weather forecast.

She said harvesting plans had changed already just in the week and a half the machine has been at the vineyard. When she left work on Saturday, she said, the plan was to put the Gregoire to work on Tuesday for the first time, but since the forecast called for rain by lunchtime that day, operations were moved ahead of schedule to Monday.

"Grapes here have a very specific window of when they should be picked," she said.

In the past, harvesting plans were dependent on when people from the community could lend a hand at the vineyard.

"We just had to pick no matter what because that's when our help was coming," she said.

While the modern method makes more sense agriculturally as far as harvesting goes, the $100,000 machine is certainly not a cheaper method, Houle said.

"It was not an easy decision, but for us to make our best wine this was our best path," she said.

Nick Bennion, vineyard manager, has been helping harvest grapes by hand at the vineyard since he was about 10 years old. On Monday, Bennion, who had to track down a manual for the Gregoire that was in English since it only came with such a book in French, was driving the new machine on Monday and getting used to the process.

"It pretty nifty," he said. By noon, he had only nudged one of the wooden poles at the end of a row of grapes, misjudging the turning radius of the machine by just a little.

New Hampshire vineyards have a tight turning radius, he said, and it would take some getting used to before operating like a pro. From mid-September to mid-October, he'll be harvesting the grapes by their varieties.

"There's a big learning curve," he said.

While the tractor that pulls the machine is a typical farm tractor, the Gregoire has a joystick like an excavator and Bennion, who turned his childhood summer job into a career, is constantly adjusting the machine to keep it level in eight different ways.

"It's an amazing machine," he said.

And the hope is that it gives the vineyard a way to continue producing amazing wine, Houle said.

"We always want to make the best quality wine we can make. This gives us the best opportunity possible," she said.